Kiwibank Customers Targeted in Another Phishing Scam

Internet phishers and scammers are targeting customers of Kiwibank to grab their personal banking information.

The scam involves a fraudulent e-mail being sent out, purporting that $20,000 has been credited to the recipient's Kiwibank account.

Moreover, the e-mail has a malevolent link that takes the user to a phony homepage of Kiwibank's Website where the visitor is asked to submit his bank account details including his PIN number.

Security specialists in New Zealand state that the entire process is a phishing assault. When users divulge their PIN number along with other account information to the scammers, it gives the fraudsters a chance to access the users' bank accounts to briskly withdraw money.

Bruce Thompson, Spokesman for Kiwibank, said that the new fraudulent e-mail scam is 'upsetting', as it appears genuine and recipients tend to invoke a reason explaining their eligibility for the $20,000 sum, as reported by YahooNews on September 29, 2008.

Thompson further stated that Kiwibank customers were not facing this type of scam for the first time and they are capable to handle such frauds. Also, the bank hoped that it would be able to shut down the spoofed site soon.

Meanwhile, as per the Kiwibank Officials, the scammers attacked all banks nearly every week, but the latter would surely safeguard their customers, as reported by YahooNews on September 29, 2008.

Nevertheless, the bank has not received any report of anyone losing money to the new phishing scam.

Also, it may be noted that Kiwibank customers were caught in one other phishing attack in May 2007. In that scam, phishers distributed a bogus e-mail that sought bank account particulars from the customers by inviting them to conduct regular account maintenance so that Kiwibank could promise security of their money.

Meanwhile, the bank officials have advised its customers not to answer any e-mail asking for their online banking login information and erase it immediately. They also said that Kiwibank would never request a customer to disclose any such information over e-mail.